Tara Reade is a person who exists

[Emily Lake]

You don't have to be a feminist to believe a woman reporting rape, but if you promote the mindless, destructive idea of 'believe women', you are probably a feminist.

So... diverging for a moment... What's your problem with feminists? Why do you seem to imply that feminists are bad?

 

[Toni]

Voluntary belief is something philosophically incomprehensible to me.

Sounds like a personal problem to me.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't believe Sulkowicz but my belief could be changed if Nungesser confessed or there was video evidence showing Sulkowicz's account was correct.

Let me get this straight. You believe him, on the basis of his word alone, simply because he claimed it. You will not believe her without a confession from him or hard video proof to show you beyond any doubt?

In both sides of that, you're giving his word significantly more weight than her word. You're accepting his version as true with no proof, only his claim. In fact, your acceptance of his version is so strong that one of the only ways you would accept her version is if he said her version was true.

Why is his word so much more trustworthy in your eyes than hers?

 

[Emily Lake]

I can see many people on this board still haven't let go of the little god of "free will" and I can also see it's perhaps fruitless to try to persuade them.

Free will vs determinism is a meaningless philosophical circle-jerk. At the end of the day all humans behave and interact as if we have active will and agency with which to make decisions. All human cultures rely on this convention, it's what underlies justice and punishment, education, teaching right from wrong, and the entire concept of right and wrong in the first place. Whether that convention is the result of actual unbound will or whether it's completely programmed in and there's literally only one possible path is completely useless pedantry.

In fact, I'll claim the lie to your philosophy right there in your own quote above. The entire concept of "persuasion" is useless if we don't have agency and will. So even if you claim that you view the world as deterministic, all of your interactions and you very means of communication assume the existence of agency and will in order to function at all.

 

[PyramidHead]

Getting back to Tara Reade. Suppose she is telling the truth and Biden did sexually harass/molest her? Apparently in a national election in the US, that is not a significant negative, otherwise the human shitpost that is our President would not have been elected.

Right. Even if her story is true in every detail she currently provides, that leaves me with a choice between a one time sexual assaulter who is at least ashamed enough of his actions to deny them, and serial sexual assaulter who bragged about it. I know who I am going with, and that is even before weighing character, demeanor, policy and ideology between the two "men".

Jesus Christ, why do I keep coming back here

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Voluntary belief is something philosophically incomprehensible to me.

Noted. Are you done now?

I can see many people on this board still haven't let go of the little god of "free will" and I can also see it's perhaps fruitless to try to persuade them.

I can't believe this thread has gone here. I thought it was about a sexual assault allegation by a former Biden staffer. But I find out it is a philosophical argument about free will and belief.

 

[Metaphor]

In fact, I'll claim the lie to your philosophy right there in your own quote above. The entire concept of "persuasion" is useless if we don't have agency and will.

You'll have to explain that to me. I have no idea how agency and will is necessary for the concept of persuasion.

 

[Emily Lake]

I can see many people on this board still haven't let go of the little god of "free will" and I can also see it's perhaps fruitless to try to persuade them.

I can't believe this thread has gone here. I thought it was about a sexual assault allegation by a former Biden staffer. But I find out it is a philosophical argument about free will and belief.

I think it's a bit more a case of morbid fascination and inability to really process Metaphor's rationale on the entire topic.

 

[Emily Lake]

In fact, I'll claim the lie to your philosophy right there in your own quote above. The entire concept of "persuasion" is useless if we don't have agency and will.

You'll have to explain that to me. I have no idea how agency and will is necessary for the concept of persuasion.

In order to change someone's mind, they have to have the ability to actually make a decision. They have to have the capacity to take in new information, compare it to existing information, and make a decision to change their view. For you to even try to persuade someone else to change their mind, you have to take as given that the ability to change one's mind exists as something other than a complex illusion, and you have to have an innate belief that you can select and choose the right approach in order to lead them to actively change their view.

Without the underlying concept of agency, the entirety of debate and persuasion is meaningless. It implicitly relies on the existence of agency.

 

[Metaphor]

I don't believe Sulkowicz but my belief could be changed if Nungesser confessed or there was video evidence showing Sulkowicz's account was correct.

Let me get this straight. You believe him, on the basis of his word alone, simply because he claimed it. You will not believe her without a confession from him or hard video proof to show you beyond any doubt?

In both sides of that, you're giving his word significantly more weight than her word. You're accepting his version as true with no proof, only his claim. In fact, your acceptance of his version is so strong that one of the only ways you would accept her version is if he said her version was true.

Why is his word so much more trustworthy in your eyes than hers?

His version of events makes more sense with the evidence presented - in particular the text communications after the alleged event - so I believe his version and not hers.

Of course, if he confessed, I'd believe both of them, since they'd be saying the same thing and there would be no reason at all for both of them to lie that one raped the other.

Sulkowicz is hanging around libertarians now and even got over her visceral disgust at attractive white men:

During the summer of 2018, Sulkowicz tells me, she was single for the first time in years. Swiping through Tinder, a man she found “distasteful” super-liked her. “It smelled like Connecticut,” she says of his profile. “He was very blond, law school, cut jawline, trapezoidal body figure, tweed suit kind of vibe, but something inside of me made me swipe right, I don’t know.” They began messaging, and she found him witty. “He was actually way more fun to talk to than any other person I matched with.”

 

[Metaphor]

In order to change someone's mind, they have to have the ability to actually make a decision.

I'm with you. I make decisions all the time.

They have to have the capacity to take in new information, compare it to existing information, and make a decision to change their view.

Still with you.

For you to even try to persuade someone else to change their mind, you have to take as given that the ability to change one's mind exists as something other than a complex illusion, and you have to have an innate belief that you can select and choose the right approach in order to lead them to actively change their view.

And there you've lost me. I think you are trapped by your own sentence construction:

the ability to change one's mind exists

You have to take it as a given that beliefs can change, not that people can choose to believe something they do not believe.

 

[Metaphor]

You don't have to be a feminist to believe a woman reporting rape, but if you promote the mindless, destructive idea of 'believe women', you are probably a feminist.

So... diverging for a moment... What's your problem with feminists? Why do you seem to imply that feminists are bad?

That needs its own thread. But in short:

• feminism is built on a false foundation--patriarchy theory.
• feminism has other unproven foundations--for example that inequitable outcomes can arise only from unequal treatment.
• feminists have co-opted other causes (e.g. lgbt) because the feminist demand for misogyny exceeds the supply.
• feminists are deeply hypocritical when they claim to promote the equality of the sexes, yet 'equality' is operationalised as 'at least as good as or better off than men'. The World Economic Forum publishes an annual 'Global Gender Gap' report. Countries are scored on a scale from 0 (worst gender gap) to 1 (no gender gap). But '1' is a lie. Look at page 12. Australia gets a score of 1.0 for educational attainment, because, by the methodology used in the report, at least as many women get degrees as men. But of course there is a gender gap in education attainment. Boys are doing worse. It's just they don't care if boys are doing worse.
• feminists (the ones that will survive, anyway) have adopted Woke left ideology, a destructive and pernicious ideology that is obsessed with categorising people and awarding privilege based on that categorisation.

 

[PyramidHead]

DNC: elevating probable rapists (but with fewer outstanding allegations than Trump!) to the presidency since 2020 (well, 1992 really)

 

[Ford]

Anyway, while you all try to explain to Metaphor the concept of alternative meanings to words and that no one gives a flying fuck what his own private Idaho looks like, here’s a recent, compelling opinion piece by a former prosecutor: Why I'm skeptical about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Ex-prosecutor

Well that's all nice and reasonable, but can we please get back to the derail from the person dedicated to railing against feminism?

Thanks.

 

[Emily Lake]

That needs its own thread. But in short:

• feminism is built on a false foundation--patriarchy theory.
• feminism has other unproven foundations--for example that inequitable outcomes can arise only from unequal treatment.
• feminists have co-opted other causes (e.g. lgbt) because the feminist demand for misogyny exceeds the supply.
• feminists are deeply hypocritical when they claim to promote the equality of the sexes, yet 'equality' is operationalised as 'at least as good as or better off than men'. The World Economic Forum publishes an annual 'Global Gender Gap' report. Countries are scored on a scale from 0 (worst gender gap) to 1 (no gender gap). But '1' is a lie. Look at page 12. Australia gets a score of 1.0 for educational attainment, because, by the methodology used in the report, at least as many women get degrees as men. But of course there is a gender gap in education attainment. Boys are doing worse. It's just they don't care if boys are doing worse.
• feminists (the ones that will survive, anyway) have adopted Woke left ideology, a destructive and pernicious ideology that is obsessed with categorising people and awarding privilege based on that categorisation.

Wow. I was expecting at least some shallow attempt to whitewash your view and make it less offensive. I suppose I have to give you props for owning your own hatred of independent women I guess.

 

[Toni]

Anyway, while you all try to explain to Metaphor the concept of alternative meanings to words and that no one gives a flying fuck what his own private Idaho looks like, here’s a recent, compelling opinion piece by a former prosecutor: Why I'm skeptical about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Ex-prosecutor

I agree with many but not every single point he's made in this article.

 

[laughing dog]

DNC: elevating probable rapists (but with fewer outstanding allegations than Trump!) to the presidency since 2020 (well, 1992 really)

Sour grapes make shitty whines.

 

[ronburgundy]

Whether Reade's accusation is true is only relevant in the same way that any rape accusation against any random person is true. It has little to no relevance in any rational decision-making process about whether to vote for Biden. A private and personal interaction from yesterday, let alone from 30 years ago isn't relevant to the actual consequences of a Biden or Trump presidency. Even if one focuses solely on rape and other women's rights issues, that private action has essentially zero relevance to what Biden would do differently than Trump on the public policies and judge nominations that actually impact rape victims and violence against women. What is relevant are Biden's actual public political actions on those issues, and on that front his creation of the Violence Against Women Act is one of the better pieces of legislation in US history.

Is Biden going to suddenly rape many more women if he's president? No, the added scrutiny would predict that becoming president would actually make him less of a direct threat in that regard, and the lack of accusations from within the past 30 years suggests it's probably not likely either way.

So then anyone actually care's about rape victims and rape prosecution (rather than using rape for their own political purposes of attacking the Dems), would be voting based upon whether the differences in actual policy actions by Biden and Trump, as well as their respective parties suggests that one of them being POTUS would bode better for preventing and prosecuting rape. And no reasonable person could do that and not conclude that any decision other than voting for Biden will increase the odds of more rape victims, more rapists not prosecuted, more women forced to birth fetuses resulting from rape, and similar results for assault of women generally.

That doesn't even get into the countless other issues on which Biden's record differs from Trump, despite being far from ideal, which is only relevant if someone more ideal has a plausible chance of defeating Trump.

 

[Derec]

I can't speak for Rhea but this is what I mean by it:

Believe the victim is truthfully reporting what they genuinely believe happened.

The problem with this is that you have no a priori way of knowing who the victim is. Calling the accuser a "victim" is begging the question. If the accusation is a false one, then the accuser is the perpetrator and the accused in the victim.
In the Duke Lacrosse case, Crystal Magnum was the perpetrator (she got away with it since she was not prosecuted) and the innocent lacrosse players were the victims.
Wanetta Gibson was the perpetrator. Brian Banks was the victim.
And so on.

Do not disbelieve them for no reason.

Neither should accusers be believed for no reason. The proper attitude is one of impartial neutrality.
Beliefs should be apportioned in accordance to evidence. They should not be an a priori attitude toward the rape accuser.

Do not fail to diligently and conscientiously investigate their report.

Do not prejudge the outcome.

Exactlt. And a priori believing the accuser because she is a woman is prejudging the outcome.

No one is suggesting we should blindly accept that an allegation is objectively true and accurate in every detail.

That's exactly what feminist demand to "believe women" entails!

No one is suggesting we do away with investigations.

Actually some feminists want the burden of proof to be reversed for rape cases.
Call to shift burden of proof to rape-accused

Labour's sexual violence spokesperson, Mrs Williams has called for radical reform of the sexual justice system which would see rape accusers believed by police as a starting point.
This would place the burden of proof on the accused - directly contradicting the philosophy of "innocent until proven guilty".
Ms Williams said many victims of rape do not report it because they have little faith in the justice system.
She said the country needed to have a discussion about how to address that power imbalance.
"Now, I know that runs up against 'innocent until proven guilty', and that would be one of the issues that we'd really have to consider long and hard, but I'm of the view that we have to make some changes."

Automatically believing the rape accuser leads to reversal of the burden of proof if pursued with any sort of logical consistency.

There are a few extremists who say it's the only possible interpretation of "believe the victim"

Otherwise known as radfems. They are hardly a few, but rather a legion, especially in "women's studies" departments in universities. But as we have seen, they also exist in legislatures such as the New Zealand one.

 

[Derec]

During the summer of 2018, Sulkowicz tells me, she was single for the first time in years. Swiping through Tinder, a man she found “distasteful” super-liked her. “It smelled like Connecticut,” she says of his profile. “He was very blond, law school, cut jawline, trapezoidal body figure, tweed suit kind of vibe, but something inside of me made me swipe right, I don’t know.” They began messaging, and she found him witty. “He was actually way more fun to talk to than any other person I matched with.”

Poor guy. I wonder how long it will take him to realize that she is an absolute nutcase.